Oh What a Night!

A night of drama, and indeed, trauma. Archie was Not Well. In fact, we thought he’d eaten something and was hallucinating… All night.

It started innocently enough, about 8pm, I peeled and ate two oranges in the lounge. Archie’s not keen on the smell, of course, but it’s never really bothered him before. But last night it apparently had an immediate detrimental effect on him. Although he was nowhere near the orange and didn't get any spray, he rushed away and sat by the door, though he didn’t want out. He refused to come and lie on my foot - this is very strange behaviour!! He kept sticking his nose up in the air and sniffing - presumably the orange smell was annoying him so much. He kept up the nose in the air constantly and avoiding us all evening - I did not enjoy Homeland (apart from it being a bit silly anyway.)

At bed time he went to sleep on my rug. I thought all was well. I got up at 2am to go to the toilet. This journey is always - always - accompanied by a wee dog, with hugs and licks and back to bed for both of us. This time he did not meet me coming out. Where was he? I went to look, put lights on, looked outside - No Sign of Him! Came back in, and there he was sitting huddled by the door - refusing cuddles. It was as if he didn’t even know me. He refused to stay on the bed as a treat.

This went on all night - we were all awake. He did have a couple of short stints on the bed, laying his head down briefly, but soon sitting up and sticking his nose up in the air, sniffing. What on Earth was going on??

6am I put the light on. In the light, I could see that his right eye was closed over and full of puss and mess!! OMG! He’s been stung! He’s poked his eye in the hedge!

We got up then and we were going to rush to the vet. But he ate his breakfast and seemed a wee bit more like himself - following us around, showing an interest in his toys etc, so we waited till 8:30 before we rang.

Archie was very brave. We were less so...

The vet cleaned out his eye (with a cotton bud!). He put stuff in to make the tears bright green, so that he could see if there was any damage to the cornea. None, thank goodness. His eye is bright red, but it’s clean, he’s had drops and an injection, and more drops for the next few days, back on Thursday morning. He’s not in pain any more and is quite perky. We’ve been for a couple of sensory walks round the block (today I picked up a rather nice set of four stackable vege basket things - ideal fit for organising the sundry wee items in my tool cupboard. And I could carry them all by myself, too).

It’s just so heart breaking when you don’t know what’s wrong and they can’t tell you. But he’s on the mend now, although the vet doesn’t really know what the cause was/is. There was no obvious moment where he was hurt. I've never been so glad to see him trying to pinch my hat from the sofa!! Back to normal, almost.

I can’t be bothered cleaning the path...